


Cosmic Joke

by Dune



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Chance Meetings, Children of Earth Compliant, Time Travel, Timey-Wimey, dealing with immortality, time travel jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-17 05:49:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1376170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dune/pseuds/Dune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like almost all insane ideas and almost all stories, this tale starts in a pub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cosmic Joke

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks for betaing go to brewsternorth and Yetaxa the Goddess who were both kind enough to convince me that this was good enough to post. All remaining mistakes are mine. The last Who plot bunny still hiding on my harddrive, let's hope my muse hasn't died.

"Even the gods love jokes."  
\- Plato

 

 

_"How did this all start?" Jack asks in one of his more maudlin moods, staring into his glass and trying to find a reason, something to hold on to._

_"We met. We decided to talk, you wanted a drink," the Doctor says after a while, the past and the future reflecting in his eyes. Jack will never get used to that._

_"And when will it end?" Jack asks, avoiding the Doctor's stare._

_"After all this time, and still you ask such a human question." The Doctor grins, and orders another round._

 ---

This story is heard in countless variations all across the galaxy, but due to time travel being involved, it twists and turns and any observer in linear time would shake their head in confusion. We only catch glimpses of the whole, but it is enough to be retold throughout time and space.

Like almost all insane ideas and almost all stories, this tale starts in a pub.

 ---

There is a pub at the mouth of the Taff, in the city commonly known as Cardiff for the last few hundred years. It's an ordinary pub, its patrons the kind of ordinary people you'd find in any bar or pub throughout the universe, maybe minus some less obvious alien species or appendages. But then this is Cardiff, a city on a Rift in time and space, a city that has seen weirder things than a human who has forgotten how to die a long time ago.  
The immortal (who has called himself Jack for quite a human while now) sips on his pint (he's gone back to enjoying alcohol now and then), ignoring the buzz of the other patrons, revelling in the feeling of home this place has always given him. Sometimes he dreams of despair under a desert sun, sometimes of suffocation and sometimes of friends dying, but his waking thoughts soon return to the comfortable Welsh drizzle he's so used to by now. The bar is cold and laden with the salty air of the sea, the beer is slightly stale and the free peanuts taste like they have been on the counter for at least a month. Nothing has changed here for decades, and very little probably ever will.

Jack doesn't mind, especially not today, because today Halley's comet travels towards its perihelion, coming as close to Earth as it ever will. Other important things will hopefully return with it. It is silly, but it's an appointment he doesn't dare miss.  
He'd call it a date, but the other party to this little deal would snort indignantly at that. He would snort some more should Jack mention that a huge rock in the sky suits him much better as a time keeper than the primitive technology of calendars or clocks (which, Jack knows, have always confused the hell out of him) that humans are usually so fond of.

True to his word (given almost 50 years ago - but then what is Time for a being that calls himself Lord of it?), the shady doors of the bar creak open and a pinstriped figure strides in with the fading rays of sunlight. The comet can be glimpsed in the sky already.

Some patrons whip around to stare as if by some gut instinct, but the Time Lord isn't here for them. They mumble gratefully, returning their gazes to their drinks. All except for Jack, keeping his hands from shaking by clinging to his beer, his eyes never leaving the slim figure of the Doctor as he walks toward the bar. His face lights up as he flops down next to Jack on one of the unstable barstools, managing to get the attention of the barkeeper and obtain a pint in record time.

"Told you." The Doctor grins before taking a big gulp from his glass. Told You, as if keeping promises was the easiest thing in the world. Jack would laugh, but he's afraid to ruin this moment.  
 _Two time travellers walk into a bar_... Jack stifles a grin at that thought bubbling up in his mind, his hand landing heavily on the Doctor's shoulder. The Doctor rolls his eyes amusedly. It's good to have company once in a while, on their journeys through time. It's a terrible relief, they both know, though they'll never admit it.

Later, they will watch Halley in the night sky, philosophising about life, the universe, death and the pain of their extraordinary fates, of new loves and friends, the fear and certainty of loss always sneaking up on them again. Time always wins, they know.

"See you next time then," the Doctor will say, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets, slinking back into Cardiff's shadows. Jack will stay behind, will listen to the soft sounds of the night and from far away he'll hear the TARDIS leave, disappearing into time and space, maybe to dance in Halley's tail, maybe not. Jack will grin, and mumble, "It's a date, Doc," before fading into the night himself.

Jack will watch as Halley hurtles past Earth and then around the sun, will think of it as it gains speed and freezes again, traveling away from the blaze of the inner planets, only heating up to shine again in 75 years time.

An entire human lifetime.

 ---

_"Listen. Two time travellers walk into a bar and one says..." the Doctor stops to wave the barkeeper for another round, and that's all the opening Jack needs._

_"Oh, that one's so old," Jack laughs, "I told that one to my grandfather already."_

\---

"Time isn't a straight line of cause and effect. Linearity is only the human concept of things," the Doctor says for what feels like the hundredth time this evening (who would've thought this regeneration couldn't hold its liquor?) and Jack can't help but complete the Time Lord's phrase with false gravity. "Only from the outside can the true beauty of it be seen." Jack ducks from a peanut flung at him and laughs, giddy with joy that the Time Lord came again, didn't forget the comet. The night is beautiful, although the beer is still stale.

Suddenly, he's eager to find out what his future holds.

\---

The Doctor offers adventures, danger and fun. Obviously, he can't imagine living in one place for so long, Jack knows; even imagining it is enough to make him skittish and pleading.  
Jack refuses all offers (except the one to meet again in 75 years, of course) gently, and steals a goodbye kiss instead. The Doctor feigns annoyance, but the smile playing around his lips, the bounce in his step as he leaves speak of something else.  
Jack will keep that habit, he thinks, as he savours the taste of Time herself on his lips, the tang of eternity mingling with the cold night air.

\---

Sometimes they have to leave in a hurry, alien invasions and imminent catastrophes demanding their attention. They curse their luck and their timing, saving each other's lives (not that they'd need to, they snark afterwards) at least as often as the planet in the process.

They still have their beer afterwards.

\---

Neptune is a welcome distraction from the warmth of Earth, and he wills the freighter to refuel faster, to flee Sol's fire forever. The sky is already dark here, the Sun an eternal dream, the cheap moonshine that's searing his guts a nice counterpoint to the frozen helium lakes outside.

The Strixian deuterium smugglers ruffled their feathers when they realised he was from Torchwood, but Jack is too tired to play Earth's defender or the solar system's stakeholder. They leave him alone after showing him the canteen, their huge avian eyes no doubt already seeing more than he is willing to share. In his mind, Jack can still feel Ianto's life fleeing from his body, hear Alice scream and Stephen die. The sooner he leaves the light of Sol behind, the better.

He doesn't even turn around when a familiar sensation makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, doesn't flinch when the familiar pin-striped figure sits down next to him on the bar. Jack continues to stare at the ice fields through the canteen windows, seeing nothing but bleakness. He downs his moonshine, barely managing not to cough.

"I tried running away. You know, you make it look like a good solution."

The Doctor studies him intently. "Did it help?"

"No. I'm waiting for time to heal all wounds. Until then, booze will do." He salutes the Doctor, who sighs in response.

They're silent for a while, watching the icy plains before the Doctor speaks again. "You know, right now not too far from here, Halley's comet is losing speed, slowing right outside of Neptune's path. Aphelion, humans call that. The farthest point from the sun. But it'll be back, lighting up Earth's night sky soon." He pauses, but doesn't look at Jack. "We know that, don't we?" It isn't a question, so Jack doesn't answer.

They sit in silence after that, neither of them needing to speak, neither of them needing to say the things they both already know. Time, Jack thinks, that is all that both of them have an excess of right now. He never asked for it.

"That's a date, Doc," Jack finally snaps, pays for his drink with the last of his Earth money, and makes his way towards the docks without ever looking back.

\---

He travels far, sees things he'd never dreamt of and even though he didn't plan to, he rescues lives again. Old habits die hard.

He'll be back on Earth in time for the comet, he decides after managing to save a race of small furry herbivores from extinction (they thank him with squeaky voices, mangling Basic grammar terribly, and he smiles for the first time in months).

In the end, he hears whispers that Earth is in danger, and realises that some things just never change.

Only when he lands and gets wet in the Welsh drizzle immediately does he realise how much he missed this planet. His planet. He walks down the street in search of a telephone. Gwen's maternity leave must be over by now.

\---

Jack grows weary when he meets the Time Lord out of the ordinary routine: no matter what the Doctor claims, it always means trouble. Well, almost always. Jack has to concede that the Doctor is usually where he is needed. Still, some things never change.

"You're fifty years early," he tells the figure lying on the pavement, with long, shaggy hair and his coat singed in places, the TARDIS leaking thick white smoke.

In the end, he's right about the trouble, of course.

 ---

_"Listen. Two time travellers walk into a bar and one says..." the Doctor starts, grinning like the lunatic he is._

_"Oh, don't tell me," Jack laughs "I don't want you to ruin the punchline by causing a paradox."_

\---

Droid - the cybernetic alien he got out of a government lab - watches him carefully for a while. Then, only weeks after Halley's comet loses the sun's fire, he presents Jack with a gift of gratitude for his rescue. It's a model of the solar system, the brass spheres and wirework with their antique look fitting perfectly to an empty corner of Jack's desk, to stand there among the other souvenirs, the flotsam of a life lived for too long.

"You liked the comet," is Droid's only reply when Jack asks what the blue stone is, orbiting the little brass sun in a slim ellipse perpendicular to all the other little spheres. Of course he likes the comet, Jack thinks, every time it's easily one of the best nights of a century. "It moves at the correct speed," Droid explains when Jack only stares dumbfounded at the little object, lost in those little memories of happiness the comet offers every time.

He only believes Droid's words a month later, after watching the little clock carefully, the comet moving infinitesimally every day, while the planets' dance around the sun is so obvious. He must've used parts of himself to achieve this accuracy, Jack realises, and feels terribly honoured. Ianto would've liked Droid, Jack thinks, stroking the old fashioned stopwatch adorning a lonely corner of his desk.

They lose Droid to the Rift a year later, when Halley passes Jupiter.

\---

New Cymru forbids alcoholic beverages, so they stick to the peanuts

\---

New Britain forbids peanuts, so they stick to the ale.

\---

New Europe has neither beer nor peanuts so soon after the war, so they sip their uncontaminated water from a reasonably clean glass, watching the sun set over the ocean from the pub's disintegrated ruins.

\---

Jack suspects the Doctor can't always make it (he doesn't think he forgets, but a Time Lord has Things To Do and Places To Be), but he's a Time Lord, more often than not using cheap time travel tricks to be on time.

The different faces are a dead giveaway, he tells the Doctor, who seems to be surprised that Jack notices every time, as if it's nothing more than a new haircut. More often than not it's pin-stripes and trainers, though. Jack wonders how often the Doctor comes to meet him from his point of view, when and why he decides to jump forward (or backwards) for their pint.

He doesn't mind. He looks forward to their meetings every time.

\---

_"How did this all start?" Jack asks, watching the people walking by, after all this time still amazed to see time pass around him._

_"I could get all philosophical, tell you that for a Time Lord, we've always been here, always will be here, because Time structured it that way. But really, let's not drag the Gods into this."_

_Time as Goddess. Jack scoffs at the thought. Only a race as masochistic as the Time Lords would come up with something like that. She's hardly ever just, for one thing. Never gives a day off._

\---

Halley is long gone, as is the sun, together with the city called Cardiff and the little pub with the free peanuts.  
Still they manage to meet again, somehow keeping the odd 76 years for nostalgic reasons no one but them understands anymore on this planet they call New Earth. They didn't think to bring the comet or the peanuts, but the beer is quite all right. It was the most obvious place to go after the sun went nova, but still, it's not the same anymore.

The Doctor is apparently surprised to see him (and has been eyeing his greying hair with some interest when he thought Jack wasn't looking), glancing over his shoulder now and then as if fearing to meet old friends.

Jack can sympathise. This place feels _wrong_.

\---

He stares at the sky as the comet's tail lights up again, and wishes old Edmond was still alive to get his well deserved _I told you so_. But Jack decided long ago that Time's a bitch, travelling in it even more so. He should've seen the temporal storm wave approaching, but he's so old now, and his Agency training so long ago. And frankly, he didn't care. Still, he would recognise this planet and that comet anywhen, even so far back in time. He opened his eyes to flames of ice and dust fleeing over the familiar constellations.

The little bar doesn't exist yet, Cardiff is still just a sleepy little village, the Industrial Revolution a long way away. And the Doctor doesn't even know where he is. He could tell him once they meet again, but wouldn't that cause paradoxes and an insane headache?

Jack watches the comet travel through the sky, the night's darkness complete in an age where humans still use open fires and never felt so alone.

He gets up anyway. He hopes they've managed to invent beer yet.

\---

The people of the Nineteenth Century celebrate the end of the world like humans always do: Drinking and Scandal, that's the way to go. Jack agrees, gets terribly drunk as he tries to convince a petite blonde that he's indeed a prophet, and doesn't she want to go and watch that deadly comet with him? He's terribly lonely here in Berlin, he tells her, exiled from Cardiff for at least a century while his younger self is killing time there, working for a secret organisation. She thinks he's drunk, and giggles happily. The world's ending, isn't that funny?

True to his prophecy, he and the blonde spend an amazing night together, experiencing things at least one of them had never thought possible. Jack leaves early, after a night of tangled dreams and nightmares.

 _Sarajevo_ , something in the back of his mind is whispering, images of mud and death rising unbidding with it. He shivers in the morning breeze.

\---

_"Listen," the Doctor tries again, "two time travellers walk into a bar and one says..."_

_"My future self told me that one already." Jack laughs, and narrowly avoids the peanut aimed for his head._

\---

This meeting is one of those rare encounters neither of them planned, but a nice one, as far as Jack is concerned. It's a shining light in the pit that's the Eighties, anyway.

He's so used to the Doctor in pinstripes now (although he hasn't seen him for nearly 300 years) that the sight of a leather jacket makes him freeze and nearly drop his beer.

His ears are that much larger, his hair that much shorter and his mood that much darker than he remembers. When the Doctor looks up and doesn't recognise him, he can't resist. He orders the next round, smiles at the man who's sending so many 'keep off' signals that there's plenty of room to sit next to him in the crowded pub. Jack loves a good challenge.

Later, much later the Doctor will remember the nice chap he met in a pub in Cardiff somewhen, a man who seemed to know more than any human should, telling him about how just past Neptune a comet was slowly finding its way back into the light. He didn't really care for company, so soon afer the War. But the stranger felt _right_ , somehow.

Because of that he will decide to rescue a no-good renegade Time Agent, who bears a certain resemblance, before his stolen ship gets blown up by a German Bomb. A wise man never challenges Time.

Parallel timelines were never Jack's idea of fun, but still the Doctor, the chronologically (if not always temporally) correct Doctor manages to find him somehow after that chance meeting with his ninth self.

Whenever Halley lights up the sky again they meet, like their younger selves do in that dingy bar in Cardiff. It's another city, another pub, but always close to the ocean. Maybe it's a Time Lord Thing (though maybe he cheated), always turning up at the right moment.

Jack wished the Doctor would use it more often.

\---

There are other comets in the sky sometimes, but their orbits make him dizzy, his (still) human heart afraid of the number of years their cycles take.

He finds others like him, some claiming to be older than scripture, older than farming. He believes the sane ones sometimes, yet the slightly mad ones are usually more genuine. He knows much about madness by now.

Sometimes he meets them again after what would be an impossible time span for mortals, shares a beer, listens to stories about hunting and gathering. He sits with a man who claims to have hunted mammoths through the fields of France, drinks beer while staring at the Himalayas with a man who claims to be 5000 years old.

He would've never believed them, but now he can spot the melancholy, the pain that only a very long life can bring in their stances, sees his own losses reflected in their eyes. They hide it all away behind a weak smile, bidding each other goodbye and a 'see you around'. What else is there to say?

Still, there's only one appointment he never misses. Anywhere, anytime.

\---

His only thought when the trap closes is that he's going to miss his beer with the Doctor.

The darkness, he can stand. Hunger and thirst are too far off to bother about right now, sleep has been unnecessary for decades. But still he's restless in the darkened cell, not because he was dumb enough to be trapped in here, but because he knows right now a ball of ice and dust is heating up as it travels closer to the furnace that is Sol. Soon the snowball's nucleus will light up until it trails a band of fire across the sky. After all these years, and still time is running out. He laughs, screams and kicks the walls, but they don't yield.

In the end, the Doctor frees him, a week after the comet has gone again. They have their beer anyway.

\---

_"How did this all start?" Jack sighs, that question so old now that he doesn't even remember a time when he didn't ask it himself._

_"I can't remember." The Doctor seems largely unperturbed by this, sipping on his beer. "Time, just like nature, abhors straight lines." He shrugs. "It's humans who try to make your own, linear sense of it. Always seeing patterns that aren't there."_

_Jack nods, a tiny part of him pleased that he still seems to be human, even after so many lives._

\---

Jack stares at the sky, the stars unusually bright in above him, watching him like eyes from the darkness. The stars, just like him, are waiting for the life to drip out of him where the bullets tore through his lung. Death is always such a drag.  
Somewhere out there (he would check his Wristcomp, but he's too weak to move his arm) Halley is passing Neptune, reaching its pivot in the darkest parts of the solar system. The piece of ice and rock must dream of a memory of the sun, Jack thinks, of its blazing peacock tail lighting up the darkness it's travelling through right now. It's a dream it has been having since time immemorial.

Jack stares at the sky, feeling the warmth bleed out of him with his life. No one knows, nowadays, that he'll get up. No one cares, really. Things change all the time.

Jack wonders where Neptune is in the night sky above him. He wonders where the Doctor is.

\---

Their meeting wasn't as happy as it usually is. There's a shadow around the Doctor, suffocating his smile and the joy in his eyes. He talks urgently, keeping his voice down as if fearing someone else might overhear his desperate recounting of things he needs to put a stop to. Jack simply listens, nods with understanding as the Time Lord falls silent and empties his beer in one gulp.  
This is it. End of the line. No second chances, no safety net. This is their last meeting, his last chance to escape his immortality. It's doubtful that anyone will be able to help him once the Doctor's gone. He hasn't offered, hasn't asked for Jack's assistance, just relayed the facts. Talked, as they always did in the light of the comet. But Jack wouldn't be Jack if he didn't choose to go down fighting. He swallows, trying to hide the sudden excitement and dread mingling in his throat. "End of the universe, eh?"

The Doctor nods, trying hard to hide the tears forming in the corners of his eyes with the hard stare that means his enemies are in deep, _deep_ trouble.

"Haven't been there in quite a while - I wonder if they have peanuts."

The two strangers laugh weakly and leave the shadowy bar, and if any of the patrons raises an eyebrow at the strange groaning sound travelling in through the shaded windows, it's soon lost and forgotten in the evening gloom.

Maybe they died. Maybe they didn't.

The strangers will meet again, of course, linear time is weird like that. They'll sit in a pub and talk, they'll sit in _any_ pub and talk. Just watch out for them, and there they'll be, demanding free peanuts and discussing the weather.

They always will be. Time, the Goddess of Everything, is a very confusing Lady.

\---

_"Listen. Two time travellers walk into a bar and one says..." the Doctor starts, already only barely suppressing laughter._

_"Oh, I've heard that one before!" Jack laughs and takes another swig from his pint, revelling in the beauty of the moment._

 


End file.
